PicoBlog

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I speak about education a lot, but lately, the push toward defunding public schools at the same time we see a rolling back of child labor is more than upsetting…and it’s materializing in front of us. Missouri is considering a bill right now to ban restrictions on child labor laws. Yes, ban them. So, what do child labor laws have to do with vouchers and defunded schools?

In a quiet frame of mind, I picked up a handful of straw to rearrange it in my garden and uncovered a DeKay's Brownsnake. The snake was so small it would have fit through my wedding ring. It did not move. It was only 12 inches long. This species almost never bites people. If you handled it roughly, it might get scared enough to try, but even then, it probably could not break the skin.

It never rains in Southern California—until it does. And then it doesn’t want to stop. We live in the land of extremes—and that has always been so, but the extremes are only getting more so: Three years of drought followed by an atmospheric river combined with a bomb cyclone. But rather than wait to see if we needed to build an ark (we didn’t!), we skedaddled to the desert a few days ago—Palm Desert, to be exact, about 2 1/2 hours due east of our house.

I am not a poet. In fact, I’m seldom moved to write verses. I know nothing about the technical side of poetry — metre, and all that. Occasionally, when the fit takes me, I scribble down a few faltering lines. A few days ago, a chance conversation with a friend about Holy Saturday reminded me of a poem I had written a couple years ago about the Harrowing of Hell. It was for a proposed poetry anthology about the Catholic liturgical year that never came to fruition.

Once upon a time you could just blame The West Wing. Generations of British centre-left politicians, think-tankers and journalists grew up in the thrall of President Jed Bartlet, the gruff but kind Nobel-prize winning economics professor turned most powerful man in the world. Bartlet could win over voters (maybe) and viewers (definitely) through a mix of moral suasion, good faith arguments, and the sheer power of academic wonkery. This, to a certain type of UK politico, is what American - and hence British - politics should be like.

It was odd last summer when two podcasts about women faking cancer landed on the Internet at basically the same time. Both were about young women who were connected to Evangelical Christian communities. Both claimed to need help to raise money for “alternative treatments,” and “essential things.” Neither story featured the accused, the subject of the investigation, to speak for herself. Scamanda, for those who haven’t listened to this blockbuster hit, is part salacious coverup story, part hardboiled detective yarn.

Does taking part in a study alter the way participants behave? Research suggests that people change their natural behaviour so that it matches their interpretation of the aims of a study. More specifically, participants are often aware of or trying to guess what the researcher is trying to investigate, which makes them more likely to behave in a way they are expected to behave. This happens even in cases where participants are not explicitly told what the aim of a study is.

Hello and welcome to Gossip Time, a weekly guide to the stars by Allie Jones. This week: an actress and a pop star bond, a designer and a former hockey player catch a five-hour flight, and Hilary Duff stands up to technology. Usually, the gossip out of Cannes is that Leonardo DiCaprio has a new teenage girlfriend. But DiCaprio, 49, didn’t even go to the film festival this year, and he is by all accounts still dating the same model he met there last year: Vitorria Ceretti, who just turned 26 (wow!

On Monday, I wrote about the special election for House District 35, a swing seat that was holding a special election in the Orlando area on Tuesday. You can read my backstory here. Issue #149: Can Florida Democrats Flip HD35 on TuesdayAs I discussed in my initial article, HD35, which covers eastern Orange and Osceola Counties, is a swingish seat that has slowly moved more democratic with time. It backed Joe Biden by 5 points in 2020, but then moved heavily to the right in 2022.